April 13, 2016
Everyone and their mother is picking the Washington Capitals in the first-round playoff series with the Philadelphia Flyers, and why wouldn’t they? The Caps won the Presidents’ Trophy by 11 points! This is a team coming off an incredible regular season.
On the other hand, their opponent barely scratched and clawed its way into the playoffs, clinching only in the 81st game of the season. Seems like a slam dunk, right?
Right.
• ESPN: 10 of 10 “experts” picked the Caps• NHL.com: 20 of 21 “experts” picked the Caps
I also believe Washington is going to win the series, but as Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast, my friend.” There are a few potential problems for Alexander Ovechkin and Co., but the main one is that the Flyers have been just as good as Washington over the last 25 games.Some very smart people believe that how you finish the season is kind of a big deal, which makes sense. From Travis Yost of TSN:
Let me remind you that this isn’t inconsequential. If you look at recent performance as teams head into the postseason, it tends to be extremely predictive of playoff wins and losses. That’s largely because it captures the material changes a team has went through (player acquisitions, coaching changes, injuries, etc.) that will only manifest to a small degree when looking over a much larger 82-game sample.
From a possession standpoint, the Flyers have actually been a decent bit better than the Caps over the past 25 games. Dave Hakstol doesn’t think the strong closing stretch matters all that much, though.
“We’re not going to rest on that,” Hakstol said. “We’ve got to push our level up another notch, just like everybody else does so I don’t make too much of that. Our butts have been on the line here the last couple of months and we’re comfortable with that, but we’re no different than anybody else.”
These two teams have taken very different paths to the playoffs. What is difficult to account for is the knowledge that the Caps’ amazing regular season allowed them to go on cruise control for the last month without any negative consequences. If there is a switch to be flipped, the Flyers are in trouble.
Let’s frame the question this way: Would you rather be the team that played so well early that taking your foot off the gas pedal was an option, or the team that dug an early hole and has essentially been in playoff mode for a couple of months?
Jake Voracek, who is sporting quite the beard before the playoffs even start, disagrees with his coach.
“I think we’ve been in the playoffs over the past 20 games, so it can give us a little bit of an edge in the start of the playoffs,” Voracek said.
The Flyers went 2-2 in the season series against Washington this season, but both of their wins were in overtime. As Broad Street Hockey’s Charlie O’Connor notes, the Capitals had much more success carrying the puck into the offensive zone than the Flyers did during their four games. To smart people, that is also very important.
What to expect from the Capitals, a loaded team that has struggled in the playoffs in past years, might be a bit of a mystery. The Flyers, who have a decent mix of playoff experience on the roster, just hope to keep their strong push at the end of the regular season going.
For example, Claude Giroux has 57 points in 61 games. On the big stage, the captain has largely come through.
“It’s not really hard to get the motivation to go out there and play hard,” Giroux said. “It’s the playoffs and there’s so much hype to it that it’s really easy to find the motivation.”
It’s especially easy to find the motivation when Giroux and all of his teammates had to find it in February. We will begin to see if that has any effect tomorrow night in the nation’s capital.
Follow Rich on Twitter: @rich_hofmann
